Picture a small child saying: "Can’t, shan’t, won’t!" They are using modal verbs to show their feelings and attitude to something. Maybe they are refusing to go to bed or eat their peas. Modal verbs ...

This is a preview. Log in through your library . Abstract Epistemic modal verbs and adverbs of necessity are claimed to be positive polarity items. We study their behavior by examining modal spread, a ...

Making polite requests are a part of daily life in a range of situations – we might be in a formal setting like an office, at a work party or we might be making a request because we need something.

Modal verbs are easy to spot because there are so few of them. In addition to must, shall, will, should, would, can, could, may and might, we can add ought to and have to. If we are told that we 'must ...